Survivor Benefit Update for Special Needs Children

A newly released Defense Department policy allows military retirees with special needs children to take advantage of a law changing the way their Survivor Benefit Plan can be paid after their death. The Survivor Benefit Plan allows military retirees to provide to a designee a monthly payout after their death of up to 55 percent of their retirement pay, depending on the plan the choose. Users pay a monthly premium. If the retiree outlives the person for whom he has designated the payout, the premiums are lost. In the past, retirees have been hesitant to select a disabled adult child as their beneficiary because they feared any extra income would disqualify the child from receiving other government subsidies for disabled adults, such as housing assistance and Medicaid. For more details, see this Military.com article.